The Hugo Awards | The Official Site of The Hugo Awards The Official Site of The Hugo Awards Posted on January 9, 2017 by Kevin Peter Weston, the man who created the current version of the iconic Hugo Award rocket, died on January 5, 2017, aged 73, according to a report published by Locus Online today . Although each Worldcon designs its own Hugo Award trophy base, since 1984, all metal Hugo Award trophy rockets have been cast from a mold created by Weston at the foundry he owned. (Non-metallic trophies followed the same design but were constructed using a different process.) Weston gave presentations about the making of Hugo Award rockets and made the presentation available to The Hugo Awards web site for us to preserve here. The World Science Fiction Society recognized Weston’s contributions to the Hugo Award by including his name in the WSFS Constitution after the original designers of the Hugo Award trophy, Jack McKnight and Ben Jason. Besides his contributions to the Hugo Awards, Weston chaired the 1979 Worldcon in Brighton, UK, and was Fan Guest of Honor at the 2004 Worldcon.

He edited anthologies and was a finalist for the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Related Work for his memoir, Stars in My Eyes: My Adventures in British Fandom. Posted on August 24, 2016 by Cheryl With apologies for the delay, we are now able to release the full voting breakdown for the 1941 Retro Hugo Awards. You can find the document here (pdf). We have also updated the 2016 statistics document to correct a small number of typographical errors in the original document. These did not affect the results of the Awards in any way, and all of the numbers were correct. The only significant change is in the top 15 for fancast where The Coode Street Podcast was incorrectly listed twice. The second listing should have been for Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men, presented by Jay Edidin and Miles Stokes.

Posted on August 20, 2016 by Kevin The 2016 Hugo Awards ceremony is tonight, August 20, 2016, at 8 PM Central Daylight Time, at the Kansas City Convention Center Grand Ballroom (aka The Pat Cadigan Theatre, or more prosaically as Room 2501). Live video streaming of the 2016 Hugo Awards ceremony provided by MidAmeriCon II is at the UStream Hugo Awards page . Text-only coverage of the 2016 Hugo Awards ceremony through CoverItLive, suitable for lower-bandwidth connections, is in the window below. Our coverage of the ceremony will start just before 8 PM. Live Blog 2016 Hugo Awards Ceremony The CoverItLive feed is generally a few seconds to a few minutes ahead of the video streaming on UStream. Ad-free streaming of the 2016 Hugo Awards ceremony through UStream is sponsored by Worldcon 75 , the 2017 Worldcon in Helsinki, Finland. Internet connectivity for providing the video streaming of the 2016 Hugo Awards is sponsored by Harvest Productions .

Posted on August 18, 2016 by Kevin The designs of the 2016 Hugo Award trophy and 1941 Retrospective Hugo Award trophy were unveiled during the Opening Ceremonies of MidAmeriCon II, the 74th World Science Fiction Convention, on the afternoon of August 17. In keeping with recent practice, MidAmeriCon II elected to showcase the trophy early in the convention so that members could see it before the final night of Worldcon. The trophy has been on display in the convention’s Hugo Award history exhibit since shortly after the convention’s Opening Ceremonies. While the Hugo Award trophy always includes the rocket originally designed by Jack McKnight and Ben Jason as refined by Peter Weston, each year’s Worldcon can design its own base. In recent years, most Worldcons have had an open design competition to design the Hugo Award base. The 1941 trophy base was designed by Brent Simmons and the 2016 trophy base was designed by Sara Felix. The 1941 Retrospective Hugo Awards will be announced and presented at the Retro Hugo Swing Dance Ceremony on Thursday, August 18, 2016.

The 2016 Hugo Awards will be presented at a ceremony in Kansas City, Missouri on the evening of Saturday, August 20, 2016, starting at 8 PM CDT. The ceremony will be broadcast live on Ustream and described on the Hugo Awards web site as a CoverItLive Broadcast . Posted on August 16, 2016 by Kevin The 2016 Hugo Awards Ceremony is scheduled for Saturday, August 20, 2016 at 8 PM Central Daylight Time in the Kansas City Convention Center’s Grand Ballroom in Kansas City, Missouri. The Hugo Awards web site will once again offer text-based coverage of the Hugo Awards ceremony via CoverItLive, suitable for people with bandwidth restrictions. For those with the bandwidth for it, MidAmeriCon planns to offer live video streaming of the Hugo Awards ceremony via UStream. Details of the live-streaming coverage will be available at the 2016 Worldcon web site . Internet connectivity for providing the video streaming of the 2016 Hugo Awards is sponsored by Harvest Productions .

Ad-free streaming of the ceremony through UStream is sponsored by Worldcon 75 , the 2017 Worldcon in Helsinki, Finland. The Hugo Awards web site coverage team of Kevin Standlee, Mur Lafferty, and Cheryl Morgan will be “on the air” approximately fifteen minutes before the ceremony. You can sign up at the CoverItLive event site for an e-mail notification before the event starts. Remember that the CoverItLive text coverage is text-only, and is likely to not be in synch with the video streaming. Also, the CoverItLive team here at TheHugoAwards.org is not responsible for the video streaming coverage and cannot answer any questions about it. If you can’t be in Kansas City, we hope you’ll join us on CoverItLive or watch the ceremony on UStream. The 1941 Retrospective Hugo Awards will be announced and presented at the Retro Hugo Swing Dance Ceremony on Thursday, August 18, 2016. The Retro-Hugo ceremony will not be streamed or otherwise broadcast, but the results will be published on the MidAmeriCon II and Hugo Awards web sites after the live presentations in Kansas City.

Hugo Award Winners Join Hugo Award Winners The Hugo Awards are given every year for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hug The Hugo Awards are given every year for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. Organized and overseen by the World Science Fiction Society, Hugos are given each year at the annual World Science Fiction Convention as the central focus of the event. The awards were first given in 1953, at the 11th World Science Fiction Convention, and have been awarded every year since 1955. Over the years that the award has been given, the categories presented have changed; currently Hugo Awards are given in more than a dozen categories, and include both written and dramatic works of various types.

Five ‘no awards’ given at Hugos | The Bookseller Home News Five ‘no awards’ given at Hugos Five ‘no awards’ given at Hugos Published August 24, 2015 by Charlotte Eyre Share Share on Linkedin Cixin Liu has won the best novel prize at this year’s Hugo Awards, although no awards were given in five categories, reflecting recent controversy over how the prizes are given. The annual Hugo Awards are for science fiction and fantasy works and are voted for by anyone who is a member of (i.e. has paid to attend) the 2014, 2015, or 2016 WorldCons. However, this year’s awards attracted controversy because of the actions of two campaign groups - Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies – who allegedly tried to skewer the process so that the awards would go to right-wing authors. The groups had allegedly paid for fans to go to WorldCon to have influence over the final winners, an accusation which lead authors Marko Kloos and Annie Bellet to withdraw from the awards, despite their work being nominated.

Announcing this year’s winners online , the World Science Fiction Society said its members rejected the slate of finalists in five categories, giving ‘No Award’ in Best Novella, Short Story, Related Work, Editor Short Form, and Editor Long Form. “This equals the total number of times that WSFS members have presented No Award in the entire history of the Hugo Awards, most recently in 1977,” the society noted. In total, 12 awards were presented this year. Liu’s The Three Body Problem, translated by Ken Liu (Head of Zeus), won the best novel award, whilst The Day the World Turned Upside Down by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, translated by Lia Belt (Lightspeed), won best novelette. Awards were also given for best graphic story, best dramatic presentation (long form), best dramatic presentation (short form) and best fanzine. In July, fantasy author George R R Martin urged “every true fan” of science fiction and fantasy to vote for this year’s Hugo Awards to “help protect the integrity of the rocket”. He said: “Who are all these new Supporting Members? Are they trufans rallying to the defense of one of our field's oldest and most cherished institutions?

Are they Sad Puppies, Rabid Puppies, Happy Kittens, Gamergaters?... Are these the Neo-Nazis and right-wing reactionaries we have been warned of? The truth is...no one knows. We may get a clue when the ballots are opened and counted, but even then, the numbers may well just say, ‘Answer cloudy, ask again’.” Lean in 15: The Sustain Plan by Joe Wicks Tom Kerridge's Dopamine Diet: My Low Carb, High Flavour, Stay Happy Way to Lose Weight by Tom Kerridge Lean in 15: The Shape Plan by Joe Wicks The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled by Ruby Wax 'No award' sweeps the Hugo Awards following controversy | Books | The Guardian Science fiction 'No award' sweeps the Hugo Awards following controversy Liu Cixin won for Best Novel, but the controversial Puppy slate of nominees led to an unprecedented number of categories in which no award was given Among the winners, an episode of the BBC’s Orphan Black won the equivalent short-form award.

Photograph: Steve Wilkie/Orphan Black II Productions Limited 2014/BBC Worldwide/Steve Wilkie Sunday 23 August 2015 12.20 EDT Last modified on Wednesday 26 August 2015 10.56 EDT Share on Messenger Close The Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin won the big prize for best novel at the 2015 Hugo Awards in Spokane, Washington, on Saturday night, for The Three-Body Problem. Guardians of the Galaxy got a nod for best dramatic presentation, long form and an episode of the BBC’s Orphan Black won the equivalent short-form award. Hugo voters, however, gave “no award” in five categories, including best novella and best short story. The World Science Fiction Society noted in its announcement of winners that the “no awards” were without precedent. Five, they said, was also “the total number of times that WSFS members have presented no award in the entire history of the Hugo Awards, most recently in 1977”. The unprecedented number of no award votes followed a controversy over a voting bloc, known as the Sad and/or Rabid Puppies , that loaded the ballot earlier this spring.

The Puppies say they are reacting to the transformation of the Hugos into what one called an “affirmative action award” . The Puppies organized themselves to vote as a bloc in the nominating process in order to put more white, male candidates on the ballot [see footnote]. As the voting turnout for the nomination process is typically low, the strategy worked. Critics of the Puppies in the science fiction community pointed out that their leaders, among them Vox Day and Brad Torgerson, were promoting unrepentantly sexist, racist and homophobic views. Among the Puppies’ slate of nominees was a book put out by the Patriarchy Press. Another of their favored writers, John C Wright, is better known for his rabidly homophobic views than for his work. Many prominent writers of science fiction and fantasy who also happened to be white men, including George RR Martin and John Scalzi, urged voters to reject the Puppies slate.

On Twitter, Scalzi declared himself thrilled by the outcome: John Scalzi (@scalzi) August 23, 2015 Award winners included the first volume of Ms Marvel, written by G Willow Wilson, illustrated by Adrian Alphona and Jake Wyatt, for best graphic story and Julie Dillon for best professional artist. Wesley Chu received the John W Campbell Award for best new writer. This footnote was added on 25 August 2015. The Puppies did not only include white male candidates on their ballot AwardWeb: Hugo Award Winners Hugo Award Winners 2013 Nominees * * Special Committee Awards Designed by Marina Gelineau The Science Fiction Achievement Award, also known as the Hugo Award®, is given annually by the World Science Fiction Society® (WSFS®). The complete Hugo nomination lists since 1980 are online at this site, in additional to all of the Hugo winners from the beginning of the awards. Hugo Award FAQ | The Hugo Awards The Hugo Awards I just won a Hugo Award! Is there a special version of the Hugo Award Logo I can use? What are the Hugo Awards?

The Hugo Awards, to give them their full title, are awards for excellence in the field of science fiction and fantasy. They were first awarded in 1953, and have been awarded every year since 1955. The awards are run by and voted on by fans. When are the Hugo Awards presented? The Hugo Awards are awarded each year at the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon). See the list of Upcoming Worldcons on the right side of the page for the specific sites and dates of future conventions. The Awards are generally presented at a ceremony on the third or fourth evening of the Worldcon. Each year’s Worldcon determines which day of the convention on which to present the Awards. How are the Awards determined? Who selects the nominees and winners? Voting for the awards is open to all members of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS), and to become a member all you have to do is buy a membership in that year’s Worldcon. It is not necessary to actually attend the convention.

A “supporting membership,” the cost of which varies from year to year (in 2015 it costs US$40; in 2016 it costs US$50), is all you need to join WSFS. How many Hugo Awards are presented each year? What are the categories? The number and nature of the Awards has varied from year to year. There is a list of the current award categories here . How do I submit my book (or story or movie) for nomination for a Hugo Award? The short answer is, “you can’t.” See “Submitting Your Work” for more details. Why do I have to pay to vote? Well, the simple answer is that the Hugos are awarded by WSFS members and, just like most other clubs, you have to pay to be a member. Your money goes towards helping finance the awards and the convention that holds them. There is also a view within WSFS that it is a good thing to limit voting to genuine fans, people who really care about science fiction and fantasy. Finally requiring WSFS membership helps prevent ballot stuffing.

If voting were free people might go around hassling their friends, or even random strangers, to vote for them, a process known as “freeping.” Because there is a small barrier they are less inclined to do so. In any event, it isn’t a “poll tax” because WSFS isn’t a government; it’s a voluntary organization. You have to join the World Science Fiction Society and pay membership dues to WSFS in order to vote. What do I get for being a WSFS Member? Firstly you get the right to nominate and vote in the current year’s Hugos. (See below and here for details of the voting process and why it is divided into two stages.) You also get the right to nominate (but not vote) the following year if you don’t renew your membership. In addition you get the right to help chose where Worldcon is held (currently the vote is held two years ahead of the convention, so if you join in 2015 you get to help pick the site for 2017). Finally you get a copy of the current Worldcon’s Souvenir Book, and copies of any other publications that Worldcon might issue to members. Why are they called Hugos?

The Hugo Awards are named after Hugo Gernsback, a famous magazine editor who did much to bring science fiction to a wider audience. Gernsback founded Amazing Stories, the first major American SF magazine, in 1926. He is widely credited with sparking a boom in interest in written SF. In addition to having the Hugo Awards named after him he has been recognized as the “Father of Magazine SF” and has a crater on the Moon named after him. What does a Hugo look like? The basic design of the Hugo is a chrome rocket ship created by Jack McKnight and Ben Jason, with the current version based upon a refinement designed by Peter Weston in 1984. The design of the base on which the ship is mounted is left up to each individual Worldcon, so each year’s Hugos look slightly different. A photographic archive of Hugo designs is available here . How are the results decided? Voting for the Hugos is a two-stage process. In the first stage voters may nominate up to five entries in each category. All nominations carry equal weight. The five entries that get the most nominations in each category go forward to the final ballot. In the final ballot voting is preferential.

Voters rank the candidates in order of preference. The system for counting the votes is quite complicated but it is designed to ensure that the winner has support from the majority of voters. There is a full description of the counting procedure here . Why do you have a two-stage system? Hundreds and hundreds of science fiction and fantasy works are published each year. No one, not even the top reviewers in the field, can possibly read/see all of them. Other awards limit the field by restricting themselves to works of certain types (e.g. only fantasy), or by type of work (e.g. only books), or by where they are published, or by the nationality of the author. The Hugos attempt to cover the whole field. The voting system explicitly accepts that no one can have seen/read everything. It relies on the fact that many people participate to find the five works that are most popular (that is have been seen/read and enjoyed by most people), and then there is a run-off between them in the final ballot. Who can nominate and vote?

Nominations are open to members of the current year’s Worldcon, the members of the past year’s Worldcon, and, starting with the 2012 Hugo Awards, the members of the following year’s Worldcon. The final ballot is open only to members of the current year’s Worldcon. You do not have to attend the Worldcon in order to vote. Each person may cast only one nominating ballot even if that person is a member of more than one Worldcon. A special category of Supporting Membership is available for people who wish to vote but cannot afford to attend the convention. Supporting Membership also entitles you to all of the official Worldcon publications for that year, and entitles you to participate in the vote to select the site for the Worldcon to be held two years hence. Each Worldcon sets its own membership rates. Do I have to attend Worldcon to vote? No. You do not have to attend Worldcon to vote on the Hugo Awards. You need to have at least a Supporting Membership (see previous question above). Voting it done by mail and online before the convention. Do I have to be a member of Worldcon to be nominated for an award? No.

You do not need to be a member of Worldcon to be nominated (or to have a work authored by you nominated) for a Hugo Award. The members of Worldcon nominate and vote on the Hugo Awards, but anyone can be nominated for or win one. So how do I promote my work for the Hugos? Reviews in publications that cover awards can help. Other than that, word of mouth is a good method. Look for web sites and fanzines that review books (or short fiction or movies). If you really want to spend money on promotion the best bet is probably Worldcon progress reports. A Worldcon will send several mailings to its members during its lifetime. You want to advertise in one that comes out about a year before the convention. Check out the links in the sidebar of this site to find the web site of the convention you need. What if I still want to promote my book/film/self for a Hugo? Our advice: Be careful. Excessively campaigning for a Hugo Award can be frowned upon by regular Hugo voters and has been known to backfire. Who runs the ballot? Each Worldcon is responsible for administering and counting votes for the year in which it takes place.

The Worldcon committee will appoint one or more people as Hugo Administrators. It is their job to see that the process takes place efficiently and fairly. If you have any questions about the Hugos your first port of call should be to ask that year’s Hugo Administrator. What categories of awards are there? The most famous categories are Best Novel and Best Dramatic Presentation. However, there are many other Hugo Awards available, including some for short fiction, for artists, for editors and some for fannish activities. An additional award, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer , is voted for and presented alongside the Hugos but is not an official Hugo Award. A full list of the current award categories is available here . What works or persons are eligible? Generally speaking, works are eligible if they were published in the calendar year preceding the year in which the vote takes place. Some Awards are given for a body of work rather than for a single item, in which case it is all work produced in the calendar year in question that is considered. See the list of Award categories for full details of eligibility rules. Are non-American works eligible? Yes. Any work is eligible, regardless of its place or language of publication.

Works first published in languages other than English are also eligible in their first year of publication in English translation. If something is copyrighted in one year and published in another, when is it eligible? When a publication date (usually on the publication information of a book) or a cover date is different from a work’s copyright date, the publication or cover date applies. For example, if a work has a copyright date in 2010 but a publication date of 2011, it it eligible for the 2012 Hugo Awards. If there is no publication or cover date, the copyright date applies. Are self-published e-books considered as potential nominees or must the publication be through a traditional publisher? Self-published works, e-books, and other “non-traditionally” published works are eligible. There is no restriction requiring works to be published through “traditional” publishers. What is this Eligibility Extension stuff? The members of WSFS have been concerned that works published in English outside of the USA are not getting sufficient exposure to the voting public (the largest group of whom are Americans even when Worldcon is in another country).

Frequently US publishers will pick up on successful British, Canadian or Australian books (amongst others) a year or two after their initial publication. American voters want to nominate them, but by then it is too late because the eligibility year is passed. So effective with the 2015 Hugo Awards, WSFS granted an additional year of eligibility for such works when they are first published in the USA. This extension only applies to works that did not make the final ballot in their initial publication. What if I am not sure about the length of a work? Both the fiction and dramatic presentation categories are divided by length (fiction by word count, dramatic presentation by running length). You don’t want to have to count the words in a story before nominating it. Furthermore, the Hugo Administrators have a small amount of leeway to move works between categories. For example, a work that is 39,900 words long but is marketed as a book rather than in a magazine might be more suited to the novel category than novella. Equally a movie that is 88 minutes long but comes from a major studio and is widely shown in cinemas might be better suited to the long form dramatic presentation category.

Once again the first thing you should do is check recommendation lists. They may have checked the word count with the author or publisher. In close cases that may result in a work being moved they will give a sense of where other people think it belongs. These sources are not authoritative. The final decision belongs to the Hugo Administrators, but they are most likely to go with the preferences expressed by a majority of the voters (unless those preferences are clearly contrary to the rules). The good news is that if you nominate a work in the wrong category the Administrators will try to move it. But they can only do that if there is room. For example, if you have incorrectly nominated a story as a novelette when it is in fact a novella then the Administrator will move it, but only if you currently have less than five nominations in the novella category, because you are only allowed five. So if you are not sure where a work belongs, it is advisable to leave space for it in the other category in your nominations. If a work is published in a revised version, is it again eligible for a Hugo? If the revision is substantial enough, yes. Some revised works have received a second nomination when they were sufficiently different from the original.

For example “Beggars in Spain” by Nancy Kress won a Hugo as a novella in 1992 and was nominated again as a novel in 1994. The novel was substantially longer than the novella, and both the voters and the Hugo Administrators believed that this qualified it as a separate work. It is quite hard to say in advance how different a revised work has to be, but a good rule of thumb is that it should be obvious to an ordinary reader that the work has been substantially altered. We can’t rule on individual cases in an FAQ, but if a revised work gets enough nominations to appear on the ballot it is unlikely that the Administrators would overrule the judgment of the voters. charter explicitly makes fantasy as well as SF eligible for our awards. Works of fantasy have often won Hugos, and, in fact, Hugos have been won by works that some people consider horror or even mainstream. There will never be universal agreement about the precise distinctions between genres and sub-genres, so WSFS’s position is that eligibility is determined by the voters. To paraphrase the great SF editor and writer Damon Knight, a Hugo winner is what the Hugo voters point to when they award a Hugo.

What is the official name of the Hugo Award? The official name of the Hugo Award is “Hugo Award.” Prior to 1993, “Hugo Award” was an alternative name for was was formally described as the “Science Fiction Achievement Award.” In 1991-92, the World Science Fiction Society’s Business Meeting voted to drop all but one reference to “Science Fiction Achievement Award” and formally renamed the award “Hugo Award,” with the older name as an alternative. “Hugo Award” is a service mark of the World Science Fiction Society, registered in the USA and other countries. You may still occasionally see references to the older “Science Fiction Achievement Award” name, but “Hugo Award” is the official name. Are works published electronically eligible? Yes they are. The definitions of the Hugo Award categories refer only to the nature of the work, not the medium in which it is published. A novel is a novel, regardless of whether it is published in hardback, softback, as a serial in a magazine, or on disk. A webcomic is a graphic story just as much as is a comic book or graphic novel.

A fanzine is a fanzine, regardless of whether it is posted as paper, emailed as a PDF, or a blog. Why are there Hugos for fan activity? From the very beginning of SF, fans and pros have together created the field, and nearly all of the most famous writers and editors have also been fans. The fan Hugos exist to recognize an important component of that field. As we point out in the next question, “fan” and “pro” are not opposites, but simply different parts of the SF world. Awards for achievement in one part of the field do not make those for achievement in other parts of the field less valuable. You wouldn’t expect Steven Spielberg to complain that his Oscar® is somehow worthless because one can get an identical statue for Best Make-up Artist, would you? What is the difference between “fan” and “professional”? Terms like “fan” and “pro” describe things we do, not kinds of people — they aren’t opposites. You are a professional when you sell your work for money. Fannish activity is done for the love of it, but is frequently far from amateurish.

The same person can engage in both professional and fannish activities, and many of our greatest and most famous pros were (and are) also fans: E. E. Smith, Poul Anderson, Ray Bradbury, Hal Clement, Fred Pohl, Joe Haldeman, and a hundred others. The most high profile example of this in recent times is David Langford, who won a Hugo for a short story in 2000 but also has won Hugos for his fan writing. Because we have a sort of in-between kind of publication called a Semiprozine, the Hugo Awards have a somewhat technical definition of what constitutes “professional” publication, listed in the WSFS Constitution in Section 3.2.11: 3.2.11: A Professional Publication is one which meets at least one of the following two criteria: (1) it provided at least a quarter the income of any one person or, (2) was owned or published by any entity which provided at least a quarter the income of any of its staff and/or owner.

This rule only affects these categories: Best Professional Artist: qualifying work must appear in a professional publication Best Semiprozine: Semprozines must be non-professional publications Best Fanzine: Fanzines must be non-professional publications Best Fancast: Fancasts must be non-professional in nature Best Fan Writer: Fan writing must appear in semiprozines, fanzines, or in generally available electronic media Best Fan Artist: Fan art must appear in semiprozines, fanzines, or through other public display Note that the “professional” definition does not affect the other categories on the Hugo Awards ballot. WSFS does not require that written fiction, related works, or dramatic presentations be “professionally” published, nor do the Best Editor categories mention “professional” in their descriptions. Does “fan writing” mean “fan fiction”? Fan fiction is one form of fan writing, but fan writing covers much, much more. Fan writing includes writing about SF and fantasy, writing about fandom and the fannish life, as well as pretty much any writing about anything that is written to appeal to fans. Fan writing is just about any writing fans do for other fans that they don’t get paid for — including writing this FAQ!

Why isn’t there a Hugo for…? The list of categories for which the Hugos have been awarded has changed frequently down the years. The categories that exist now are ones that have proven to work well and provide reasonable competition. But new categories are sometimes added, and old ones sometimes removed. Changing the categories requires that a motion to do so be passed at the WSFS Business Meeting at two successive Worldcons. Anyone attending a Worldcon can propose a motion to the Business Meeting. However, if you wish to do so you would be advised to consult the Chairman or Parliamentarian of that year’s Business Meeting for advice as to the appropriate wording. To create a viable new category, it needs to include enough first-rate works that there will be five worthy nominees each year, and it needs to be sufficiently universal that most people nominating and voting for the Hugos could intelligently make choices. So, for example, Best Proofreader would fail because few voters are in a position to pass judgment as they never see books before the proofreader has worked on them. You can find more advice on how to change the Hugo rules here . Do I have to have read or seen everything in a category to nominate?

No, you do not have to have viewed everything possible to nominate or to have read all five nominees to vote. If you have seen just one movie or read one story that you think is good enough to deserve a Hugo, you should nominate it. The Hugos work best when as many fans as possible use their own experience to nominate and vote for the things they think are wonderful. Can I vote for something I have not read/seen? No, don’t nominate or vote for something you have not read or seen, and don’t vote based on reputation — the Hugos are meant to honor your choices and judgments, not the rumor of someone else’s. What are Retro-Hugos? Science Fiction has been going a lot longer that the Hugos, so many famous works never got the chance to win an Award. The WSFS Constitution gives Worldcons the right to award Hugos for a year 50, 75 or 100 years in the past, provided only that there was a Worldcon in that year but no Hugos Award election happened that year. Not all Worldcons choose to do this. You will be informed when you receive the nomination papers if Retro-Hugos are being awarded.

Is there a monetary award? No. There is no cash prize for winning a Hugo Award. Winners receive a Hugo Award trophy. Can I buy a replica of the Hugo Award trophy? No. Trophies are custom made in small batches by each Worldcon committee each year. Trophies are not for sale. Is Young Adult fiction eligible? Yes. All science fiction and fantasy is eligible, regardless of marketing genre. Although there is no specifically-labeled Young Adult fiction category, works that are generally considered “YA” in nature have won Hugo Awards and continue to be eligible. I saw a two-part television episode with a combined running time greater than 90 minutes nominated in the Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form category. Why was that? The rules assign dramatic presentations to categories according to running times based on four ranges: Works up to 72 minutes in length *must* be placed in Short Form. Works between 72 and 90 minutes in length should ordinarily be placed in Short Form, but can be moved to Long Form by the Administrator for a good reason. Discovering that a very substantial majority of the voters nominated the work in Long Form is a good reason.

Works between 90 and 108 minutes in length should ordinarily be placed in Long Form, but can be moved the Short Form by the Administrator for a good reason. Discovering that a very substantial majority of the voters nominated the work in Short Form is a good reason. Works above 108 minutes in length *must* be placed in Long Form. These are not the actual words in the WSFS Constitution, but the above list is the effect of those rules. Administrators tend to stick with what the voters say unless there is no way for them to do so. In the case cited, most of the people nominating the work in question nominated it as a Short Form work even though it was more than 90 minutes long, and since it was less than 108 minutes long, the administrator left it where the voters nominated it. In general, administrators do not announce their decisions regarding moving works (or accepting the voters’ judgements) in this manner because they do not want to call specific attention (either positive or negative) to the works in question. The results of such moves are visible when the detailed nomination and final ballot vote counts are released after the Hugo Awards results are announced.

Also note that there are similar principles involved with the relocation of works in the four written-fiction categories, which also have a +/- 20% gray zone around their respective category boundary lengths. See also the question above “What if I am not sure about the length of a work?” for more information about the word count/running time rules. I’m an author, and some people told me that they nominated me for a Hugo Award. Does that mean I can list myself as a “Hugo Award Nominee”? No, not unless your work appeared on the final Hugo Award ballot that year, in which case you can describe your work as a “Hugo Award Finalist.” During the first stage of the voting process , all of the eligible members of the previous, current, and following year’s Worldcons (which means thousands of potential voters) cast nominating ballots, where they are able to vote for up to five works in each category. Generally speaking, only the eligible works with the five highest nominating vote tallies (sometimes more in case of ties; occasionally fewer in limited cases) go on to the final ballot. These works on the final ballot (sometimes called the “short list”) are the actual Hugo Award Finalist.

The hundreds of other works that the members nominate but that do not make the final ballot are not generally described as “nominees” except in a technical sense. This process is also described at the Fancyclopedia web site. Can I use the Hugo Award Logo to illustrate an article I’m writing about the Awards? Or should I just use some random logo I found on the internet? You may use the Hugo Award logo to illustrate articles about the Hugo Awards, as long as you do not modify or distort the logo. There are other pieces of artwork out there (generally rejected entries for the contest we ran in 2009 to design the logo in the first place) with the word “Hugo Award” in them. Please do not use these. They are not the logo of the Hugo Awards. I just won a Hugo Award! Is there a special version of the Hugo Award Logo I can use? Yes! Contact us (info@TheHugoAwards.org) for details on the use of a Hugo Award Winner logo. The Hugo Awards Were Always Political. But Now They're Only Political. The Hugo Awards Were Always Political. But Now They're Only Political.

Go to permalink Last August, the Hugo Awards for science fiction and fantasy were swept by a younger group of women and people of color. At the time, we said "This was really a year that underscored that a younger generation of diverse writers are becoming central to the genre." So maybe it's not surprising that there was an organized backlash. Top image: Cory Doctorow/ CC-by-2.0 The new slate of Hugo Awards nominees were just announced , and you can read the list at the link. Suffice to say, the nominees in pretty much every category (other than Best Novel) come pretty much exclusively from a fan campaign called Sad Puppies, organized by Brad R. Torgersen and Larry Correia . Last year, Correia organized a campaign which successfully placed one item in each category on the Hugo slate — so this year, they decided to go further. As John Scalzi has pointed out, this was not against the spirit or the letter of the Hugo Awards rules. Advertisement The Hugo Awards are voted on by fans, and anyone who purchases a supporting membership at Worldcon can nominate two years in a row.

(And typically, it doesn't take that many votes to nominate something successfully.) To Torgersen and Correia, this meant that a "rarefied, insular" group of writers were promoting their agenda by nominating works by women and people of color. To the rest of us, it looked as though science fiction and fantasy were finally catching up to reality — the best stories aren't only the ones told by straight white men. Edited to add: Here's another quote from Torgersen which does a pretty good job of explaining their stance: Advertisement In the last decade... we’ve seen the Hugo voting skew ideological, as Worldcon and fandom alike have tended to use the Hugos as an affirmative action award: giving Hugos because a writer or artist is (insert underrepresented minority or victim group here) or because a given work features (insert underrepresented minority or victim group here) characters. Torgersen has argued that the real problem isn't just a trend towards nomination of diverse works, but also nominees that reflect literary, rather than popular, tastes. He's tended to paint "fandom" (meaning Worldcon attendees) as being out of touch with pop culture, and elitist.

As he wrote in January , "while the big consumer world is at the theater gobbling up the latestAvengers movie, 'fandom' is giving 'science fiction’s most prestigious award' to stories and books that bore the crap out of the people at the theater: books and stories long on 'literary' elements... while being entirely too short on the very elements that made Science Fiction and Fantasy exciting and fun in the first place." Which is a legitimate point of view, although it ignores the many Hugo winners that were essentially popular fiction. And plenty of people have criticized the Hugos from the opposite direction — for ignoring challenging literary works in favor of pop fiction. In any case, this slate of nominees has already launched a Twitter firestorm, and lots of people are planning to vote "No Award" in every category except "Best Novel." It's definitely a weird turn of events that, the year after Kameron Hurley's double win, we see list of nominees that includes someone published by "Patriarchy Press." And this new slate can only really be understood against the backdrop of ongoing, vicious fights over racism in science fiction — we could be here all day picking through the entrails, but author N.K.

Jemisin gives you all the context you need to know here . Sponsored The Hugo Awards have always been "political," in the sense that people campaigned for them (even though I guess that was officially frowned upon.) And they were political, in that they were seen as a reflection of who gets recognition for writing science fiction and fantasy. When the nominees are mostly white men, as they have been during most eras except for the mid-1990s and the past five years , it does send a message about whose work is going to be considered valuable. And people have certainly critiqued that in previous years. But this year's list of nominees seems to herald the beginning of the Hugos becoming "political" in the sense that each "side" will have its own recommended slate of nominees. People won't get to spend months chewing over the best things they read in the previous year and grappling with their own consciences about what to nominate — instead, each side will have to decide early on which standard-bearers to double down on. Either that, or we'll see some other solution.

Advertisement Advertisement Honestly, you're never going to have a perfect system for identifying the best works of fiction published in a given year — even with a juried award, these decisions will inevitably wind up including factors that are external to the quality of the work. So the best you can hope for is that the quality of the work winds up getting considered first and foremost, over other factors. The only processes that really get you there are deliberative, involving a lot of public discussion and private rumination. That's how you get surprising, out-of-nowhere choices. As someone who won a Hugo Award in 2012, I'm sad that there might be one less avenue out there for new writers to be plucked from obscurity and put on a stage with their idols. Gear from Kinja Deals Hugo Award Crisis Averted: No Prize Given in 5 Categories - Signature Reads Hugo Award Crisis Averted: No Prize Given in 5 Categories Photo © Shutterstock SHARE Editor's Note: We've got our eye trained on The Hugo Awards, an odd interpretation of Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn, and more in today's roundup. Indeed, it's Daily Blunt time!

The sci-fi world began to panic in the days leading up to the Hugo Awards, which had been swept up in controversy because of bad behavior in the voting/nominating pool . The tension finally broke this weekend when the winners were announced -- to the extent that there were any. In five different categories (including big ones like Best Novella and Best Short Story), no award was given at all. That's right, voters managed to swamp the categories most afflicted by the online campaign which had hoped to turn the night into a victory for straight, white, male authors. Whether or not they continue to be a battleground in identity politics in years to come, one thing is certain: the Hugos will never be quite the same. Mark Twain's most beloved characters are about to enter the 21st century -- as crime fighters, on television. CBS's "Sawyer and Huck" spins a grownup Tom Sawyer into an attorney and his friend Huckleberry Finn into a private eye, counting on name recognition to trump your knee-jerk resistance to the distortion of iconic literary heroes. Before you cry foul, consider (as this article points out) that in 1896, Twain himself wrote a mystery parody novel called Tom Sawyer, Detective .

If Twain himself can roll with it, why can't we? (Let's see who they cast, and then gripe about it.) Video game movies have come a long way. In the days of "Mortal Kombat" (1995) they were seen as a losing proposition, but this oral history of the film's development explains how the game's shadowy mythology caught fire onscreen -- kicking the hell out of everyone involved along the way, both on-camera and off. For example, this: "The amount of alcohol that was consumed -- you'd stand there and people would be sweating and it'd smell like a distillery. You'd be standing next to somebody and they'd just drop down in the dirt. They were out. You just look at the guy laying there and you'd be like, 'Oh. Cut.'" Part of the thrill of watching classic movies is trying to imagine them in their original context. In the case of the "Halloween," you don't even have to imagine. The video below allows us to listen in on a theater audience reacting to the horror hit back in 1979, before everyone became jaded by overexposure to slow, silent killers.

Even so, thirty-five years later this franchise is still going strong , with a new movie in the works for next year.

Question: For what are the 'Hugo' awards given?
Answer: SCIENCE FICTION LITERATURE